There is something to be said about football, where a player isn’t going to be suddenly snatched off a college team for being too talented, compared to baseball, where many players are itching to get promoted to the majors or end up being on a minor league team just to work out some issue or rehab from an injury until they’re ready to return to the majors.
IMO, minor league baseball is very experiencial. Going to the games is what gets people excited; very few follow every game. I’m not even sure if they’re broadcast anywhere.
College basketball often has players who are 1 and done; they’ll play a single season and enter the NBA draft. I think that has had an impact on some fans but most colleges have a built-in fan base from alumni and locals.
Sure, minor league baseball is great if you’re looking for a cheap good time, which is what they focus their marketing on. But it’s not an actual athletic competition, it’s an exhibition.
Right, a lot of college fans hate that (well, the old ones do, the younger have never known it to be otherwise). But at least they do FINISH their one season!
Free agency plays a big role in American sports. I can’t imagine a relegated team attracting free agents.
Oh, bullshit. Most of these guys are trying to make it to the majors. They are performing to the best of their abilities, which means they’re trying to win every game.
Now, there are certainly sideshows, like condiment races and fireworks. But those are for the entertainment of the fans. The game itself is usually a pretty good display of athletes competing.
Really good discussion of the subject.
That’s a bit much. For the most part, the players on the field are trying their hardest to hone their skills, learn the game, and impress the parent club. They may be on different trajectories, with some freshly drafted kids, some journeymen with a glimmer of hope, and some major league players working on rehab or sent down for a variety of reasons.
The managers and coachs in the minor leagues have different goals than those in the majors, but they’re not putting on an exhibition.
Sure, the managers, coaches, and players are all trying to win. The managers and coaches know that isn’t actually what their employers are judging them on, but that’s not the real problem. The problem is that the front offices aren’t trying to win; how could they be, when they don’t even get to pick their own rosters? They’re not meaningfully involved in any competition with the other teams in their league, except perhaps to come up with the zaniest sideshows.
Everyone may be trying their hardest on any given day, but the sum total of those days and seasons doesn’t add up to any meaningful narrative. It’s just a series of random events driven by the needs of some other team in some other city. That’s what makes it IMO fundamentally an exhibition, while Division 3 football is a real sport.
Consider a prom/rel system from the point of view of a big market fan; after all, there are a hell of a lot of us.
Imagine if there was only one Major League, with sixteen teams. If the sixteen teams that had the best records last year were all in one league next year, I as a Cubs would be seeing the Blue Jays, Mariners, Yankees, Red Sox, Guardians, Tigers, Astros and Royals on the schedule. I would be missing out on the Marlins, Braves, Nationals, Cardinals (LOL), Pirates, Giants, D’backs, and Rockies. I would absolutely take that deal!
You say this, yet you continue to state that it’s an exhibition.
An exhibition game is an all-star game, a spring training game, or a fundraiser. IOW, a game that is purely for entertainment or a tryout of new players and/or strategies.
Evidently your definition of an exhibition is a lot different than that of most people.
Well, certainly not the best free agents, but they don’t need those players, because they aren’t competing against those kinds of players. As it is, small market teams hardly ever sign top tier free agents (except in the NFL, where market size is almost irrelevant).
Well, I’ve clearly outlined my definition above. It may be idiosyncratic, but if you think these are real sports leagues, how do you explain the fact that minor league baseball is orders of magnitude less popular than the collegiate farm systems for the other major sports?
Is it your belief that players in all-star games or spring training games aren’t trying to win? That’s pretty much the default attitude of athletes. But they aren’t going to risk injury to help their teams win, and they aren’t going to lose sleep at night if they lose. And in that way, minor league games are much more like spring training games than they are like serious amateur games.
I don’t think it’s true at all that minor league players aren’t risking themselves to perform and aren’t beating themselves over a loss. Of course they are.
I mean, if you’re a pitcher trying to get into the majors and can’t win a game, do you think that helps your case? If you’re an outfielder who is hesitant to try to make a play at the wall, or a hitter not hustling to a base, how impressive are you going to be? This argument is nonsensical.
Yes, they care about whether they as individuals perform well. But they don’t really care where the team finishes in the standings, because they’re all hoping to not be on that team by the end of the season. If a guy washes out of AA ball, he’s not going to be comforted by thinking that at least his AA team won the pennant.
Literally nobody in the organization is being judged primarily by the team’s won-loss record,
As I said above: if you dispute that minor league baseball is perceived by fans as “fake” in a way that NCAA football and basketball aren’t, why do you think MiLB is so much less popular?
Can you show where I made such a claim?
I disputed your claim that players aren’t going all-out in the minors, which you seem to acknowledge, so I don’t think we are in disagreement.
Yes, my claim is not about anybody’s individual effort, but about the fact that the teams have no financial incentive to win more games rather than fewer. It’s a legitimate competition on the micro level, but not on the macro level. It’s my contention that this is why fans don’t get emotionally attached to minor league teams in the same way they do to college teams.
Springfield, Illinois (population: 130,000ish if you count the suburbs), had, until c. 1988ish, the AAA franchise of the St. Louis Cardinals. At some point we got demoted to the Single-A affiliate. Then we lost baseball entirely. Since c. 2010 we’ve had the Lucky Horseshoes*, which don’t even qualify as a minor league team – they’re a collegiate summer league. AIUI, attendance at games is in the low hundreds on a good day. Unless they have fireworks, then they sell out.
*Kind of a clever name, if you ask me. Springfield’s local dish, in much the same way that the Hot Brown is the local dish of Louisville, Kentucky, or the Garbage Plate is the local dish of Rochester, New York, is the Horseshoe Sandwich. If you’re ever in Springfield, go to D’Arcy’s Pint and get you one.
I’ve been to Spring Training games, and I’ve been to hundreds of minor league games. Your statement is absurd.
The players certainly do, as do the coaches.